US works to diversify farm trade away from China market

US Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said that the US “probably made a mistake” becoming too trade dependent on China and added that the administration was trying to pursue trade deals elsewhere.

US farmers have been hit hard by the Trump administration’s ongoing trade dispute with China, which has shut off billions of dollars worth of agricultural trade between the giant economies.

“We probably made a mistake, frankly, I’d say in hindsight, in becoming too dependent on that huge China market,” Perdue told a gathering at the North American Meat Institute forum in Washington. “When you have so much of your business in one big customer, disruptions like this can mean pain. I think our strategy is to go around the world, ”he said.

“There’s a hungry world out there besides Canada, besides China, and we’re pursing that aggressively,” he added, saying the administration was seeking out new agreements with the European Union, Japan and India, among others. The Trump administration slapped tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods last month.

Over the last week, the US and Canada reached a deal to overhaul the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), complementing an accord the Trump administration brokered with Mexico, the third member of NAFTA, in late August.

Perdue was vague when asked about the benefits that the new accord, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), will confer on US agriculture, and declined to quantify how much additional trade it would create for American farmers, which are a major segment of Trump voters.

“We get better access for dairy, poultry, eggs ... all those are improvements,” he said.

While many farm industry groups hailed the sealing of USMCA, they said it was far from complete without a resolution to an ongoing dispute over steel and aluminum between the three countries.